Goals and Resolutions: Mid-Year Review

Back in December, I wrote a couple of posts regarding my genealogy resolutions, goals, and research plans for 2010.  Now that the year is halfway over, I wanted to take stock of what I’ve done and refresh myself on some goals that I may have forgotten about.

I set three types of goals:  research, writing, and other.

Research

• Complete death certificate collection for all direct ancestors.
• I actually did most of this the last week of December, because I found out that the cost of death certificates in Georgia was going to increase 50% on January 2.  The only one I still have to order is Mary (Patterson) Whitener, who died in Oklahoma.
• Write to North Carolina Archives to see if they have marriage license for Ben Hemphill and Martha Lytle.
• I’ve learned that this marriage license is available on FHL microfilm, so I plan to order that.  There are a lot of other marriage licenses I need that are on the same roll.  This will also get me to a Family History Center, which was one of my unwritten goals for the year.  There aren’t any FHCs really close to me, which is why I haven’t ventured out to one yet.  I’ll probably do this in the fall as it will have to be a Saturday project and my Saturdays are spent by the pool right now.
• Continue collecting marriage licenses and death certificates from Georgia’s Virtual Vault.
• I’ve added three marriage licenses from this collection.
• Look for Eastern Cherokee apps for the Davis/Patterson/Chapman families.
• I have not worked on this yet.
• Continue looking at newspaper records on microfilm at the Chatsworth-Murray County library.
• I have not done this.  Maybe in the fall.
• Add RSS feeds to Google Reader for the message boards related to my major surnames and localities.
• I’ve added 14 Ancestry boards and 3 GenForum boards to Google Reader.  It is so much easier to keep up with the posts now!  I have a lot more to add. . .
• Process all the random  notes, emails, and to-be-entered records that are piling up, so that my in-box is not overflowing and I don’t have extra stacks on my desk.
• I was obviously delusional when I wrote this.  I tackled a few emails a couple of weeks ago and I work on the to-be-entered records, but I think they are like mushrooms and multiply overnight.  I am going to add a specific number related to this item to my monthly to-do lists to try to stay on top of it.

Writing

• Write more, specifically 150 blog posts. 
• I am so on target.  This is post #74 and tomorrow’s post will put me exactly at the half-way mark.  I’m also getting ready to blow the water out on this goal with a new daily series called “On this date” (thanks to Vickie Everhart at benotforgot for the inspiration).  Look for this series to start on July 1.
• Avoid a dark period on the blog.  There was a three-month stretch in 2009 without any posts. 
• Thank goodness for post scheduling.  Life got in the way and I didn’t write any in April or May, but I had nine posts pre-scheduled.
• Participate in 12 blog carnivals, ideally one per month.
• I’ve only done a couple – one for the Carnival of Genealogy and one for Smile for the Camera.

Other

• Attend a genealogy conference.
• I’m still planning to attend Family History Expo in Atlanta in November.
• Take one of the NGS online genealogy courses.
• I started the Family History Skills course, but I’ve only done Lesson One.  I need to add the other five lessons to my monthly to-do lists. 

Looking back on this, I feel pretty good about what I’ve accomplished so far this year.  In addition to all this, I have several other genealogy projects going on – the Notebook Project, the Census Project, the Citation Project, and the recently started RootsMagic Project. 

I have a tendency to over-schedule myself and then get overwhelmed when I think about everything that I want to do.  I’ve taken all the above research goals and added them as To-Do items in RootsMagic, with higher priorities since they were part of my yearly resolutions. I plan to get back on track with posting my monthly to-dos and then reporting back out at the end of the month for accountability.  Look for July’s To-Do list on Thursday.

Did you have any genealogy goals or resolutions for 2010 (regardless of whether or not you wrote them down)?  If so, how are you doing?

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Tagged as: To-Dos